Stresses and Strains Distribution of a Developed Cold Bituminous Emulsion Mixture Using Finite Element Analysis

Abstract

Cold bitumen emulsion mixtures (CBEMs) offer an energy-efficient, sustainable and costeffective alternative to conventional hot asphalt mixtures, as no heating is required to produce the CBEMs. The enhancement of flexible pavements performance by modifying asphalt mixture has been considered valuable. This is due to the undesirable environmental conditions and heavy loads that will cause unsatisfactory performance of conventional mixtures. Empirical methods using layers with elastic response have been largely used to design such mixtures. Currently fast and powerful design techniques are used to reduce the limitation in determining stresses, strains and displacement in flexible pavements analysis. This research presents a simple and more practicable design procedure of CBEM and discusses limitations of this design. Also, present the properties and characteristics of modified CBEMs for surface course mixture using glass fibre as a reinforcing material. In addition, a three-dimensional (3D) finite element analysis (FEA) simulation for the prediction of pavement mechanical behaviour and performance is carried out using ABAQUS software in which element types, model dimensions and meshing have been taken to achieve appropriate accuracy and convergence.